After reading up on gender, I interviewed gender experts in Zambia. This provided context unavailable in research papers and kept the project on the right path. One expert named Felly boiled it down, “ask the women what they want first”. Women might not even want the equipment or pricing structures we offered. Another gender advisor, named Tidzitwa, suggested that we involve husbands in the decision making to win their support.

Meeting the Savings Groups

Ivy, a gender advisor from Profit Plus, conducted some gender activities with the groups. While the sessions were ran in the local language, I took away quite a bit:

Men typically sit in the chairs and women on mats

Older women speak up more than younger women in mixed-gender contexts

Women bought their kids to the meetings

Men fear for women to earn money because they might leave

Men recognized that women did a hard work and weren’t paid

Families shared decision making, but men had the final say

Men who take care of kids would be treated differently or mocked by the community

In one instance, we handed our product catalog to the group of women. A older woman pointed to an image of another older female beside a welding machine. Earlier in my fellowship, I re-designed the product catalogs to include client stories and selling facts. This small change actually mattered!

We’re currently testing more ideas for women’s engagement in market. If all goes well, we’ll roll out these ideas to the rest of our offices in 2017.